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NUS Catholic Students Society
Victoria Fam
Year 2 | Arts
(third from the left)
August 16, 2018
Victoria Fam: Text
Hello, I am Victoria, a year 2 student in Arts. Growing up, I was a Sunday Catholic, I went for mass, fulfilled my obligations as a Catholic but that was about it. The Lord was a distant God to me and I never really had a personal relationship with Jesus. Since I didn’t attend Catholic schools, the idea of having a Catholic community was foreign to me. I also didn’t know the importance of community as I always felt that my faith was private, and it didn’t need to be shared.
Growing to know the Lord again more intimately through my community members, OYP and CSS events is probably the best thing that I could have asked for in University. After experiencing that the Lord is so real, so powerful and loves everyone so much and so simply, I have a renewed faith, hope, trust, joy and just a lot of excitement for the journey ahead with the Lord. I have also come to realise how blessed am I to have Him in control of my life and to be able to serve Him.
Throughout Year 1 in University I was juggling many things – academics, 8-times-a-week training, CSS commitments, staying on campus, friends and family. There were tough times but there was so much joy in being able to see the Lord in the things I did. I began to learn and to see the beauty of offering everything up as a prayer to the Lord, and I thank God for challenging me to exercise different virtues in various areas of my life. Things started to change, a match or training session wasn’t just about striving for excellence or not letting my coaches and teammates down. It was learning to pray for the Holy Spirit to lead me and to be with me through my training and games, to be aware of the Lord’s presence in everything and acknowledging that all glory is His and whatever happened was within his will. Studying also became less about the grades but more about recognising the opportunity I was given to pursue my education.
The central truth that kept coming up was that I needed to be humble – to align my will with His, to accept that the Lord knows me way better than I know myself and for me to learn to let go of the control I always desired for my own life. It was learning that I am not obligated to be the best athlete, best student, best friend or best daughter in the eyes of the world but just to follow a simple call which is to do the Lord’s will.
One of the greatest gifts God has blessed me with is the gift of this community – brothers and sisters who walk alongside me on this journey to the Lord; a community who knows me for who I am, why I choose to do the things I do, and not for the achievements and things that I can bring to the table. It is a community of brothers and sisters who have so much faith in the Lord, who live with such conviction to serve the Lord and who genuinely care for my walk with Jesus. They are there to remind me of the many truths that I have forgotten when I get distracted by the world around me. The Lord as He is is ever so gentle and knows the way to my heart, He gave me the exact brothers and sisters whom He knew were meant to walk with me on this journey to Him, to check in on me and to meet me where I was. The Lord taught me to let myself be saved before I could save others, to allow myself to seek help before I could help anyone. The Lord knew my stubbornness in tearing down the walls that guarded my heart, and sent just the right people who knew exactly how to slowly but surely tear down the walls of my heart. He called for me to learn to slowly open my heart to the people He has put in my life, to allow myself to be loved by the brothers and sisters around me, to trust in this vulnerability, to trust in their love for me, and to teach me to love them not with my own abilities, but to love as God loves.
Placing God at the centre of my life and as my priority, was not the easiest thing to do, not because the world offered so many more attractive things, but more of the amount of courage that I needed to choose to say yes to the Lord when the voices around were telling me otherwise. There was a lot of fear in saying “no” to many things because I was not sure how others would react. It meant learning and asking for the grace to give up that the things that once brought me so much joy and satisfaction because that is not what I need in this season of my life. I had to make difficult choices time and time again even though I’d repeatedly have my intentions misunderstood and faced a lot of opposition. But amidst all the struggle and discomfort, there is truly so much comfort and unspeakable joy in just putting my heart and soul into discerning the Lord’s will for me and being the little servant in His huge kingdom. Looking back at all the struggles and decisions made, there weren’t any regrets, just growth. If I had to do it all again, I would still choose to say “yes” to the Lord.
Every day I thank God for changing my heart here in University and I really can’t imagine the life I’d be living not having met Him through this community. As Psalm 84:10 very beautifully put it “Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked”. I have learnt my life was never meant to be a cautious balancing act, trying to achieve this optimal balance with my own abilities. It is more of a pretty extreme yet simple act of pouring all my trust and anchoring my faith in the Lord that He is the master of my life, and in doing His will, everything that the Lord intends for me, will fall in place.
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